Abyssal Artshttp://www.abyssalarts.com/feedhttp://www.abyssalarts.com/img/logos/Abyssalarts.png2018-11-09T16:38:47+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/city-of-the-shroud-patch-105-releasedWe’re happy to announce that Patch 1.05, which contains our updated enemy AI, is now ready for you to play! The AI in this updates is much more clever and aggressive than the previous iteration, which should make combat much more lively and engaging.

Major Updates:

Revamped AI:

Enemies are more aggressive in their movement and usage of combos.

Enemies are bet...]]>

We’re happy to announce that Patch 1.05, which contains our updated enemy AI, is now ready for you to play! The AI in this updates is much more clever and aggressive than the previous iteration, which should make combat much more lively and engaging.

Major Updates:

Revamped AI:

Enemies are more aggressive in their movement and usage of combos.

Enemies are better at picking out vulnerable targets and hitting them with clever combos. This speeds up combat and makes timing and use of defensive abilities much more critical, especially on higher difficulties. They may also pursue vulnerable targets if the target tries to run.

Enemies have under-the-hood “personality traits.” Each class has a base set of preferences (prefers being aggressive / defensive / using support abilities, etc.), and these can vary across individual units.

Enemies now have a better understanding of the map. They will now go after AP bonus tiles and the like more frequently, for example.

Enemies are now better about maintaining an optimal range for their class and preferences. For example, Gunners will generally try to keep their target at the edge of their range while avoiding being in range of their opponent, even if it means giving up an immediate opportunity to attack. Meanwhile, Mages are more aggressive and will generally tolerate a higher degree of risk if it means they can pull off a powerful attack.

We still have some more updates planned for the AI - specifically, we’re going to be working on giving the enemies ability-specific decision making, which didn’t quite make it into this patch. We got it in for a couple abilities, but we want to focus our time and energy on getting Chapter 2 ready first.

Also, if you want a recommendation from me, try playing the game on Hard with the game speed set to Fast and disable Wait Mode entirely. You should really feel the difference!

Of course, if you’ve got any feedback on what you’d like to see improved, please feel free to share it with us in the Steam forums!

]]>2018-11-09T16:38:47+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/patch-105-previewWe’re working on the first big patch for City of the Shroud while Moira writes Chapter 2, so I wanted to take some time to go over what’s coming:

Major Updates:

Revamped AI:

The AI is getting an overhaul to make it more interesting, more challenging, and to let it better highlight what makes CotS’ combat unique. When the new patch releases, enemy characters will:

Enemies will be more aggressiv...]]>

We’re working on the first big patch for City of the Shroud while Moira writes Chapter 2, so I wanted to take some time to go over what’s coming:

Major Updates:

Revamped AI:

The AI is getting an overhaul to make it more interesting, more challenging, and to let it better highlight what makes CotS’ combat unique. When the new patch releases, enemy characters will:

Enemies will be more aggressive in their movement and usage of combos. Enemies will be better at picking out vulnerable targets and hitting them with clever combos. This will speed up combat and make timing and anticipation much more critical.

Personalities: enemies will have “personality traits.” Each class will have a base setup (prefers being aggressive / defensive / using support abilities, etc.), and these can vary across individual units.

Ability-specific decision making: the classes in CotS are designed to be deep, with variety within each class coming from the types of Link Gems they have equipped. The AI will have a better understanding of how it can use the abilities it has equipped on a character to torment you more effectively, and rewarding you for keeping track of and responding to them.

Other Additions:

Combat Details Display: pressing the new “Combat Details” button during combat will display a variety of useful information on screen. This includes:

Range Preview: when you press the Combat Details button, yellow range indicators will appear on the tile you are currently hovering over, showing you what your range would be on that tile before moving there.

Player Character Shortcut Numbers: the shortcut number for each of your characters will be displayed over their head so you can quickly pinpoint where everyone is relative to the UI on the side of the screen.

Enemy Location Arrows: all (conscious) enemies will get a red arrow specifying their positions.

Minor Updates & Bug Fixes:

Update: We have made additional NPC character art for characters who are not important to the story to avoid repetition.

Update: The game now prompts you to select a difficulty when starting a new game.

Update: The AP cost of moving to a highlighted tile is displayed on that tile before moving.

Bug Fix: Fixed location and portrait of an NPC who should have been a refugee in the Refugee Quarter but appeared as an regular Citizen in Old Town.

Bug Fix: Long quest names in the Quest Tracker should no longer bleed out into the border graphic.

Bug Fix: Return To Game button on the pause menu no longer enters the “selection” sprite state when pausing even if the player is using mouse/keyboard.

The team has been under the weather with colds and whatnot for the last few weeks, so it’s taken us longer to get this done than we would have liked, but we’re slowly recovering. The patch will need some more time to thoroughly test it before we can release into the wild, but hopefully this gives you an idea of what we’ve been working on since launch.

We’ve also been following the responses to the game and seeing where players are having fun and where they’re not. We’re working on ideas to address these pain points - some will be harder and take more time than others (especially because we want to prioritize working on new chapters), but we want everyone to know that we’re seeing the feedback and will aim to address whatever we can.

Of course, if you’ve got any feedback on what you’d like to see improved, please feel free to share it with us in the Steam forums.

In the meantime, Chapter 1’s influence period wrapped up recently, so if you haven’t read about what went down, you can do so here!

]]>2018-09-28T15:11:30+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/chapter-1-resultsChapter 1 is a wrap! Here are the final results:

A last-minute push over the weekend has placed Omar ahead of Zem. Azura’s Merchants are now the most dominant in the city, followed by the rebellion, and then the Syndicate. Navid is trailing his arch-rival Zem by a significant margin, and poor Sohrab can&r...]]>

Chapter 1 is a wrap! Here are the final results:

A last-minute push over the weekend has placed Omar ahead of Zem. Azura’s Merchants are now the most dominant in the city, followed by the rebellion, and then the Syndicate. Navid is trailing his arch-rival Zem by a significant margin, and poor Sohrab can’t seem to catch a break.

What happens now? To start, Moira will be looking at not only how each of the factions stands in relation to the others but also at how their alliances and beliefs have shifted over the course of the chapter.

As you played, you were not only changing your chosen leader’s influence, but also what they think of the other leaders. So far, you have undermined several alliances, but not always mutually - in many cases, you have one leader who still trusts their ally, while their ally no longer trusts them back. I wonder how that will play out?

It’s not all seeds of distrust, though - you’ve also strengthened some bonds, and even managed to push hard for one we would never have predicted. And remember, these characters’ allies and enemies are all tangled together (for example, in Chapter 1, Navid is allies with Omar and Sohrab, but Omar and Sohrab hate each other), so these effects will ripple across the entire fabric of the story.

I don’t want to go into too much detail to avoid spoilers, but you’ve given us some incredible material to work with.

What does it mean for the city to have the Merchants rise to power as everyone begins to turn on each other, the old balance becomes untenable, and the City Guard, ostensibly keepers of the peace, watching the city descend into chaos while they are powerless to stop it?

We’ll have to wait for Chapter 2 to find out!

]]>2018-09-18T17:50:21+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/chapter-1s-influence-period-extended-through-september-16This is a quick announcement to let you know that we're extending the influence period for Chapter 1 until the end of this coming weekend: Sunday, September 16. A few newcomers have arrived, and we want to make sure they have a chance to make their mark on Iskendrun.

And if you haven't finished Chapter 1 yet, now's your chance!

]]>This is a quick announcement to let you know that we're extending the influence period for Chapter 1 until the end of this coming weekend: Sunday, September 16. A few newcomers have arrived, and we want to make sure they have a chance to make their mark on Iskendrun.

And if you haven't finished Chapter 1 yet, now's your chance!

]]>2018-09-10T14:51:20+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/patch-101-notesThis is a small patch to address one specific issue. Behold!

Fixed issue where players may not receive receive rewards from random battles after completing Chapter 1's story

That's it! We have more updates coming in a larger patch that we're still working on but wanted to get this update out ASAP.

This is a quick announcement to let you know that the influence period for Chapter 1 will be wrapping up in just under two weeks, on September 10.

That gives you two more weekends to complete Chapter 1 in order to make your mark on Iskendrun’s Balance of Power and the city’s leaders!

Once the Chapter 1 influence period ends on September 10, the Balance of Power and other ...]]>

Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun,

This is a quick announcement to let you know that the influence period for Chapter 1 will be wrapping up in just under two weeks, on September 10.

That gives you two more weekends to complete Chapter 1 in order to make your mark on Iskendrun’s Balance of Power and the city’s leaders!

Once the Chapter 1 influence period ends on September 10, the Balance of Power and other under-the-hood influences will be locked in and will no longer change (you can still play the game as much as you want!). This will let us begin parsing your decisions and writing Chapter 2!

As a reminder, this is how the system works:

A chapter is released, with a several-week period where player decisions influence the state of the game world via the Balance of Power and other under-the-hood methods

After the influence period is up, we lock in the Balance of Power and other decision vectors as they stand

We then use this information to write the next chapter

You can play up to the most recently released chapter after the influence period is over, including alternate branches of the story; it just won’t affect the next chapter’s story

We release the new chapter, and the cycle repeats!

If you have any questions, please let us know in the forums (this announcement is cross-posted on our Steam forums)! Now get out there and make your presence felt!

It has been a little over a week since City of the Shroud launched on Steam, and players are already having a dramatic impact on the state of the game world. As we work our way through each chapter, we will be posting semi-regular updates on developments within the game world to keep you up to date. Welcome to the State of Iskendrun: Volume 1!

A brief explanation for those who are new to the workings of th...]]>Greetings, Fellow Citizens of Iskendrun,

It has been a little over a week since City of the Shroud launched on Steam, and players are already having a dramatic impact on the state of the game world. As we work our way through each chapter, we will be posting semi-regular updates on developments within the game world to keep you up to date. Welcome to the State of Iskendrun: Volume 1!

A brief explanation for those who are new to the workings of the city: as players work their way through the branching story of Chapter 1, every decision they make impacts the the Balance of Power between the five factions vying for control. This Balance of Power is shared by everyone - every player’s every decision permanently alters the future course of the story as written by us, the developers.

On top of this, you as players will make decisions at critical junctures in the story that impact how the faction leaders view and relate to each other. At the start of the tale, each leader has two allies and two enemies, but based on your choices, allegiances are already beginning to shift...

As of the morning of August 20 when I took this screenshot, the current Balance of Power is:

The Merchant Queen, Azura nin Fateh, is the current leader of the pack, followed by the Syndicate Leader, Zem. Trailing them are the Rebel Commander, Omar; the Head Priest, Navid; and Sohrab, Captain of the City Guard. But their lead isn't set in stone yet - since the end of last week, Navid & Sohrab have risen from only 2% to 12% -- at the expense of Zem and Omar.

What will Azura's allies and enemies think of her jump to prominence, if indeed it remains by the close of this chapter?

The faction leader's alliances will be playing a major role in how the story unfolds in future chapters, so your choices will have massive repercussions for the city of Iskendrun and its citizens - and the choices you’re making are very, very exciting. We can't say more or we'll leak spoilers, but we're excited to see where you're taking the city!

This is one of the most fun aspects about working on a game like this - it’s thrilling to see how you all are impacting the world and the decisions you make take form. It’s truly inspiring, and we can’t wait to see where this all leads.

------------------------------

P.S.: In general, we intend to provide details on future updates to the game, patch notes, and other information in separate posts. For now, the State of Iskendrun will focus keeping players up-to-date on developments within the game world. Suggestions are still welcome, of course!

We’re launching the game on August 9 on Steam! Chapter 1 will be available for Windows and Mac for you to experience, and influence, the story of Iskendrun and its inhabitants.

Chapter 1 is big! It’s got five narrative branches, multiple boss fights, tons of quests, rebindable controls (you can play with one hand on a controller!), multiple difficulties, adjustable game speed, adjustable text speed, our Balance of Power story-influencing system - and that’s not even everything. There’s a lot going on!

We’ve been working extra hard to get the game to this point, and there’s still plenty of bug fixing and polish to do between now and release, but we’re really happy with how the game has come together.

In fact, last month we added a frequently requested feature we call “Wait Mode.”

What is Wait Mode?

When we took the game to shows, we’d often get asked if there was a way to pause the game so that it’d be possible to survey what was going on or to issue commands. After a lot of hard work and planning, we found a way!

You can now press the (rebindable!) Wait Mode button and the action will freeze - except you can still navigate the map and issue commands to your characters.

That means it’s possible to pull off simultaneous combos across characters, like this:

Staggering Shot + Combobreaker!

Now, if you want the game to play slower and give you unlimited time to deliberate your next move, the option is there!

Want the game to be faster but to let you pause to issue commands? Done!

Or, you can disable Wait Mode altogether and play the game in its “classic” setup. The choice is yours!

Visible Status Effects

We also made another quality-of-life improvement: the status effects on a given character are now visible in the UI, along with how much time is left on them and how many stacks there are.

Say one of your Brutes is Corrupted - you’ll see a Corruption icon next to their entry in the side UI along with how many stacks (if applicable!) of that status effect they have. The grey countdown circle shows you how much time is left on the effect, too!

That’s a lot of Corruption all at once!

Getting Ready for Launch

Before the rush and excitement of launching the game consumes me entirely, I want to take a moment to cover the Kickstarter rewards we'll be preparing ahead of the August 9 launch.

First, we’ll be preparing the wallpaper(s!) and soundtracks to send out ahead of release. These should arrive digitally before the game releases.

One thing to note about the soundtrack: we still have something up our sleeve, so the soundtracks will be “updated” at a later date… ;)

Once Chapter 1 is out (and I’m able to reclaim some semblance of sanity), we’ll start in on the remaining rewards that don't need to wait on anything anymore, like physical goods. The production journal is an ongoing process (we have to finish the story, after all!), so that's still a ways out, and the remaining design-related rewards will benefit from being able to play the game to inspire ideas

Thank you all for your support and patience over the years. It took longer than we thought it would, and we encountered all sorts of unexpected obstacles in the course of this journey, but we’re now ready to release Chapter 1 to you and get the story of City of the Shroud into your hands - both literally and figuratively!

We are so grateful for your support in getting here; we couldn’t have done it without you. We’ll be back with more announcements before the August 9 launch, so until then, thank you x 1,000,000!

All The Best,
Keaton & The Abyssal Arts Team

]]>2018-06-25T15:02:44+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/pax-demo-on-steam-pax-reportI hope you’re excited for City of the Shroud’s impending release this summer! It’s been quite the journey, and there’ll be even more once the story gets underway, but in the meantime, I wanted to let you know what we’re up to!

You can probably guess, but...]]>

I hope you’re excited for City of the Shroud’s impending release this summer! It’s been quite the journey, and there’ll be even more once the story gets underway, but in the meantime, I wanted to let you know what we’re up to!

You can probably guess, but we’re working hard to polish up the game to get it ready for launch! We’re currently hooking up the final bits of conversational logic, testing out all of the battles to find any remaining bugs, and making some final adjustments to improve the user experience (UI adjustments, etc.).

This means playing the heck out of the game, trying to break it as much as possible. To give you an idea of the kinds of things we’re working on, yesterday I found that one of our portal effects, which uses wind physics to swirl little glowy bits around and into itself, would suck other particles - like attack effects - into it if the characters using them were too close. Watching the smoke from Disintegrate a well as my healing spell get sucked into a portal was pretty cool, but not exactly what we’re going for in terms of gameplay (the moves worked fine!).

Also, to tide you over while you wait for Chapter 1, the PAX demo is now available on Steam for backers and folks who have pre-ordered. To access it, just follow the instructions in the image below:

Note that you have to enter the password and click Check Code BEFORE selecting “gameshow” from the drop-down list.

The new demo has the tutorial from the beginning of the game as well as a preview of one of our boss fights. It’s similar to the Rezzed demo’s boss fight, but we switched up the team to include the Machinist. Try to unleash his Ultimate ability, Skyfall - it’s a blast!

PAX itself was a blast - tons of people played the game (tons), and the response was great. The dialogue was a hit, players really enjoyed the combat, and we even got interviewed several times. A couple of those interviews went for over an hour! (My throat did not survive, but thanks to the memory foam in my shoes, my feet and back did.)

Indie MEGABOOTH was also a wonderful and humbling experience - it was an honor to be among so many great games and meet so many extraordinarily talented developers. I’d like to give special shout-outs to Hidden Achievement, developers of the Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game on Steam, ysbyrd games, LUNARSIGNALS and their game The Moon Fields, Tangled Mess Games, who are making Volantia, and Craig Barnes, composer on Streets of Rogue. From helping me lug all of the PCs and literal bags of sand to my car, to being amazing friends and booth-mates - thank you!

And to the backer who stopped by the booth while I was occupied - thank you!! I’m sorry I wasn’t able to talk with you more, and I hope you didn’t catch the con plague (I did…)!!

Overall, PAX was great - there were tons of interesting people, a stream of fun, fantastic players, homemade (life-saving) cough-drops, and plenty of adventures along the way. Even my car refusing to start for several hours in just-above-freezing weather in a parking garage only to turn on instantly once the tow truck arrived couldn’t dampen the experience (also, I got to eat good ramen).

With that, I hope you’re excited to enter the world of Iskendrun and fight to determine its fate - we’re almost there!

It’s happening! We’re getting ready to launch City of the Shroud this summer! Ahhhh!

We’ve been working super hard to get the game ready for launch, and we’re almost there. It’s been a long road, but we’re nearly at the end of it - or the beginning, rather!

We are so e...]]>

It’s happening! We’re getting ready to launch City of the Shroud this summer! Ahhhh!

We’ve been working super hard to get the game ready for launch, and we’re almost there. It’s been a long road, but we’re nearly at the end of it - or the beginning, rather!

We are so excited to get the story underway and see what you all do with it. We have tons of ideas about where the story could go and how it could develop, but ultimately it will be up to you and everyone else who plays to determine how the story plays out.

We’re also really happy with how the gameplay has come together - several members of the team have spent thousands of hours playing the game, and we still have a blast. Hopefully you will too!

The footage in the trailer above is all up-to-date, though YouTube compressed it quite a bit. The game looks great at any setting level, but it looks particularly glorious in 4k. If you want to see some high-res screenshots, head over to the game’s updated webpage (actually, just go check it out - it looks awesome!):

www.abyssalarts.com/shroud

Also, today we were lucky enough to be featured on the PlayStation Blog! How cool is that!

In the post, we talk about the game’s combat system and adapting it for controller (we’ve added full controller support). If you read it, hopefully it will give you a bit of insight into what sort of things have gone into setting up the controls the way we have.

We also wanted to take a moment to cover some questions that might come up:

What’s the Definitive Edition?

The Definitive Edition is our fancy name for the game once the story is complete. After we release Chapter 4 (the final chapter), we will proceed to tweak the game to fit a more standard single-player narrative structure, rather than the interconnected web of players driving a narrative that the game will be when it launches.

Ultimately, it will be an update to the game, after the story is complete, to make it feel more like a traditional game to make it easy to replay and experience the story from other angles.

How do I get the Definitive Edition?

All of our backers’ Steam copies of the game will get the update once it’s ready for free - it’s part of the package!

Will consoles get the player-driven story?

Nope. The console versions are releasing after the story is complete, since managing City of the Shroud’s narrative structure is going to be a big undertaking for our tiny team, and trying to make that work across multiple platforms would be prohibitively difficult and time-consuming. We’re sticking with our original plan: release on Steam, then play with you to create the story. We’ll then port the results to consoles when we release the Definitive Edition on Steam.

Now that the game is getting ready to launch, we’re going to be kicking our announcements and promotional efforts into high gear. We’ve got some really exciting news coming in the very near future!

We can’t wait to get started!

]]>2018-03-01T15:29:40+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/building-and-lighting-the-battlefieldsHappy Halloween! We may not be a spooky game, but I wanted to pass out some treats regardless!

First, now that asset building is complete (yay!), we’re currently building out and polishing all of the levels for Chapter 1, then putting together their lighting and post-processing effects - all the nice bloom lighting and fancy camera features that make a game “pop.” This means laying out the tiles, then filling the maps with the buildings and props that’...]]>

Happy Halloween! We may not be a spooky game, but I wanted to pass out some treats regardless!

First, now that asset building is complete (yay!), we’re currently building out and polishing all of the levels for Chapter 1, then putting together their lighting and post-processing effects - all the nice bloom lighting and fancy camera features that make a game “pop.” This means laying out the tiles, then filling the maps with the buildings and props that’ve been building over the last year or so based on the setting for the battle that takes place there. Once that’s finished, we go in with lights and effects to make everything look especially nice.

You may recall that we upgraded to Unity 5.5 a while back, giving us access to some nice effects as well as 4k resolution support, which the game takes to very well. To get a sense of how much things have changed, check out the evolution of one of our Docks maps (Azura’s turf) from when we did the Rezzed build compared to now:

Then:

Now (Click the images for the 4k version):

The UI is turned off so you can see more of the surroundings.

Bit of a difference, right?

Of course, if we’re going to talk about Azura the Merchant Queen’s area, a dinky wooden pier with a fishing boat won’t suffice. The docks where the merchants operate need to be something a little more serious:

We also have areas that are set to different times of day, including the late afternoon, where twilight creates a soft glow as the lights begin to switch on across the city.

Additionally, we’re wrapping up our sound effect creation, so everything in the game is popping, smacking, and exploding in a big, satisfying way. It’s hard to show how much of a difference it makes, so I hope you’ll give it a try once we’re able to get a new version of the game into your hands. We still have a few bugs to iron out, but the next update will sound more alive than ever!

We have more we could show in terms of levels, artwork, etc., but at this point, I’m hoping to hold back so that there’s plenty to surprise you when the game releases. It’s a difficult balance, but since we’re an RPG, I’d like to err on the side of not revealing too much! That said, there is something major that we’ve wanted to get out to you for quite some time, but that will have to wait for an upcoming update… muahaha...

All The Best,
Keaton & The Abyssal Arts Team

]]>2017-10-31T22:18:01+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/finalizing-our-team-menu-uiWe’ve been hard at work getting City of the Shroud’s UI hooked up and looking good. There is still some polishing to be done, but we’re really proud of the results!

First, here is our new team menu UI in action:

I’ll go into more detail below, but before that, I’d like to show you our new-and-improved City...]]>

We’ve been hard at work getting City of the Shroud’s UI hooked up and looking good. There is still some polishing to be done, but we’re really proud of the results!

First, here is our new team menu UI in action:

I’ll go into more detail below, but before that, I’d like to show you our new-and-improved City Map:

What’s new here? First, the structure of the map means that it is far more screen ratio independent than it was before, so those of you with 16:10 screens (i.e., Mac laptops) will see improvements on that front.

The more obvious difference is that big old chart on the right: the Balance of Power. As you play through each chapter of CotS, the balance of power between factions will change, and that chart will show you the state of affairs at any given moment.

You’ll be able to see who you’re allied with as well as how powerful each faction is relative to the others for the current chapter (I put the Hat Merchant in the affiliated leader slot because I think he’s hilarious - not an option in the final game!).

As people play through the live chapter, those bars will fluctuate based on players’ choices until we lock the chapter’s balance of power in order to start writing the next one. Once the balance of power for a chapter is locked, the bars will show the final balance of power for that chapter until the next chapter is released. Once you start the next chapter, they’ll be moving again until we lock that one to write the next one, and so on. If you get your influence in early, who knows - your impact may end up influencing other players :)

We’ve also streamlined the experience by stripping out what we had originally called the “Main Menu” because we decided that the City Map could act as your hub - it’s how you interface with Iskendrun in the campaign, and by moving some functionality around, you can now go from the “Start” menu straight to the campaign screen with no features or accessibility lost.

The other UI element we’ve been working on is the team management menu - the screen where you’ll set up your party, equip your Link Gems, configure your stats, and even equip different skins/mod items.

You saw it in GIF form above, so let’s break it down here, screen-by-screen:

The Overview panel shows your current team setup - the class, visual appearance, equipped Link Gems, name, and movement and attack ranges of each of your units.

Clicking on a character takes you to their Moves panel:

Here, you can review and equip the Link Gems you’ve acquired, read their descriptions, and try out how the Link Gems you’ve chosen string together using the Try! Button. There are shortcuts for the other panels, as well as the option to switch the currently selected character (and even their class) too.

Next up is the Stats screen:

On this screen, you can see your full Stat Gem inventory, as well as the grid where you equip those gems for the selected unit’s current class. Descriptions of each stat are found below the grid, and the box in between the two explains either the selected gem or stat, depending on which you have highlighted.

Stat Gems that are granting your unit a Perfect Fit Bonus glow with a thin, blue line around the edges - notice that the yellow Square is not glowing, as it’s sitting on a non-square-shaped slot (also, the thick, white glow shows which gem you have selected).

If you put a Stat Gem into a slot it isn’t meant for, you gain the ordinary bonus but not the Perfect Fit Bonus. So if you want just have to have an extra HP bonus in exchange for losing a Perfect Fit Bonus, you can make it happen! Customize your unit to fit your playstyle - want a high-HP Mage that can take a few smacks from a Brute? The choice is yours!

Finally, we have the Appearance menu:

This menu lets you equip any skins or mods you’ve acquired. Simply cycle through, and you can view all the available options for a given slot. If you like what you see, you’re done! Just leave the settings as-is and you’re all set. The next time you use that unit in battle, they’ll appear just as they do here.

It’s a pretty big upgrade from the old menus, so let us know what you think!

So what’s next? We’ve got a bit more polishing to do on the menus before they’re totally final, but now that we’ve got this major UI update in, we’re turning our attention to the next big event: implementing Chapter 1.

The main content for Chapter 1 is written, all the environment assets are complete, and all of the components necessary to bring it to life are more or less ready and hooked up. So what goes into implementation? Mainly, that means getting the game text into our quest database and connecting them all together (clear Quest X >> unlock Quest Y). We’ll be putting together our battle maps for Chapter 1 as we go along too.

Stay tuned!

]]>2017-09-26T20:09:48+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/making-art-assetsOver the last few months, we had a few production hiccups that I wanted to share and thought might be illuminating for those of you interested in game production. Since we’re making most of the artwork by working with people external to the main team, there’s always a risk of delays or problems, and although we’ve had great luck thus far, this time around there were a few stumbling blocks.

City of the Shroud uses a “hand-painted” style, which mea...]]>

Over the last few months, we had a few production hiccups that I wanted to share and thought might be illuminating for those of you interested in game production. Since we’re making most of the artwork by working with people external to the main team, there’s always a risk of delays or problems, and although we’ve had great luck thus far, this time around there were a few stumbling blocks.

City of the Shroud uses a “hand-painted” style, which means that making the textures (the 2D images that get stretched over the 3D models) for the game generally requires artists to manually paint them, usually in Photoshop (it’s fairly uncommon to find teams procedurally generating a hand-painted style, but we’re helping pioneer that too!). Generally, this hasn’t been an issue - the people we’ve had the good fortune of working with have handled the style deftly.

If you zoom in our assets, you can see how cleanly the textures are painted. This can be more time-consuming and stylistically demanding than procedural generation/scanned textures, but it has a distinct feel and looks great.

Early in the spring, though, we ended up needing to work with a team of artists we hadn’t worked with before for some of our assets due to scheduling conflicts. Everything started out smoothly, but the style of the game quickly became difficult for them to achieve at scale (it’s one thing to paint a single asset; it’s another to paint dozens), and this slowed production down considerably. In AAA, this is when a company would throw money and bodies at an issue to resolve it (I’ve been on the front lines of that process a few times), but we have neither spare cash or people to do this, and besides, we wanted to be patient and work through everything until we could all achieve something we were happy with.

Thankfully, we were able to do just that - we have all of the assets we wanted, and they look really nice. It was also a good learning experience for the other team as well, since it was a new artistic style for them to take on. Here are a couple example screenshots of their work I took today in the engine:

Here is an example of what we were able to achieve with patience and perseverance.

And another example.

While it was slower than we planned (and we’re adjusting for that), we’re happy with the results and are continuing to plug away diligently at our to-dos. We’ve got a few things up our sleeve for you, and I’m excited to get them out and into your hands to try. Stay tuned!

]]>2017-09-26T20:03:55+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/introducing-the-defender-egx-rezzed-2017-and-updated-uiFirst, we're excited to announce that we're going to Rezzed 2017 at the Tobacco Docks in London from March 30 - April 1! Chris and I will be showing the latest demo of CotS (with some help from our friends), so be sure to swing by, say hello, and check it out!

The demo will have a bunch of updates:

First, we're excited to announce that we're going to Rezzed 2017 at the Tobacco Docks in London from March 30 - April 1! Chris and I will be showing the latest demo of CotS (with some help from our friends), so be sure to swing by, say hello, and check it out!

The demo will have a bunch of updates:

New playable class - the Defender!

A preview of a boss battle (in a new environment!) from the main campaign!

Updated visual and sound effects!

Enhanced visuals and an updated UI!

Of course, if you’re not able to go to Rezzed, never fear - we’ll be sending the Rezzed demo out to our backers and pre-orders via Steam so that you can check it out first!

So, what does all this look like? Well, allow me to explain:

Introducing the Defender

This is from one of the new environments in the game. Can you guess the setting?

The Defender is big, intimidating, and tough. Wielding her twin shields, she fights up-close and in the thick of it using a combination of physical power and magic. She can heal her allies (yes, we added healing mechanics!), set up barriers to keep enemies away from her allies, and deal punishing damage with the help of a little Corruption. She is a formidable opponent, and a valuable component for any team!

Here are a couple of her moves (and see some of the visual effects we’re working on):

Wave of Corruption

Input: Up > Left > Down > Left

The Defender sends out a wave of magic 3 tiles wide that travels to the edge of the map, dealing low damage and adding 3 stacks of corruption to any character it touches (look out for allies!).

Purify

Input: Down > Left

Consumes all Corruption stacks on every character within 1 space of the Defender (including the Defender and her allies) to heal the lowest health ally within 3 spaces. The amount of health restored goes up with each Corruption stack the Defender consumes.

Shield Bash

Input: Right > Down

The Defender smashes the target in the face, dealing damage and stunning them. The ability deals bonus damage and stuns the target for each Block, Dodge, and Disrupt effect they have active.

The Defender has plenty more tricks up her sleeve, but hopefully this gives you a taste of how to utilize her talents in combat.

Updated UI

We’ve also updated the combat UI to its final iteration - we’re really happy with how it’s come together. Check it out:

I hope you’re excited to test out the Defender and all the other enhancements we’ve made to the game! Once we roll out the demo, we’d love to get your feedback.

And if you’re coming to Rezzed, be sure to come by our booth and say hi!

All The Best,
Keaton & The Abyssal Arts Team

]]>2017-03-09T10:07:39+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/amigurumi-pizza-party-and-doing-it-rightHappy New Year! The CotS team had a productive pre-holiday season, and we’ve been hard at work since we got back. What have we been up to? Read on to find out!

First, over the holidays I hand-delivered the amigurumi backer rewards to our “Patron” backers - we’re all so, so thrilled with how these turned out. A huge shout-out to Liz at The Y...]]>

Happy New Year! The CotS team had a productive pre-holiday season, and we’ve been hard at work since we got back. What have we been up to? Read on to find out!

First, over the holidays I hand-delivered the amigurumi backer rewards to our “Patron” backers - we’re all so, so thrilled with how these turned out. A huge shout-out to Liz at The Yarn Mouse for her awesome work making our characters.

Liz also did a fantastic write-up over on her blog of how she made them, including all those hats, full of concept art we made for her and and in-progress photos. Click the link to read!

I couldn’t resist, so here are a few photos of my own of the final result (Liz’s photos are much better):

Also over the holidays, we held our Omega Backer Pizza Party! From around the globe we gathered and feasted on fancy pizza in honor of our glorious supporters. I showed off the latest updates to the game, including our in-progress visual updates and attack effects, and we chatted about what’s coming next in the production pipeline (between bites and everyone talking about their Final Fantasy XIV characters - turns out almost all of us play).

I’m not a good photographer, but the pizza more or less looked like this:

The motto we’re taking with this game is, “Anything we do, we’re gonna do it right,” and that holds true for pizza as well as development.

As for game development, we ended the year on several high notes:

We updated to Unity 5.5, netting a performance boost and the ability to use a shader that instantly upped our visual quality (feedback has been great, though there are some weird lighting issues to work out)

We got about 20% of our visual effects into the game (and more since then)

All the classes in the game are fully playable (we don’t have all the VFX/SFX in yet, though, so we're not quite ready to roll them out)

We got our third environment set completed

We got Steam Workshop support functioning for mods

And so on. We were pretty pumped!

Of course, that’s exactly the moment when everything is likely to shift under your feet, and shift it did! Coming into January, I suddenly had to scramble to figure out a new source for a big chunk of our environments, as well as contend with a few elements going over budget. Welcome to 2017!

Thankfully, some very talented friends of ours who had already done work on the game were available and willing to help, so after a brief tense period, environments are more or less back on track. The budget stuff is also doable, so while it may have been stressful, it’s nothing we can’t handle. (It’s almost like our Risks and Challenges section predicted what was coming!)

When I was working in AAA, I learned how having access to large coffers lets you buy an element of stability, or how possible it is to use industry clout to “make” things happen (usually resulting in overtime for many people). Obviously, that’s not possible as a small, independent developer, and I’m not willing to push overtime on someone due to our schedule issues. Instead, we’re dashing from task to task, trying to keep everything running as smoothly as possible.

Ultimately, there are a few ways to go about developing a game like ours, but they really boil down to trying to get the game done as fast as possible while using as little money as possible, or taking the time and raising/spending the money needed to “do it well.” I’ve chosen to do it “well,” since, as Miyamoto once said, “"A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever.”

The other night, I met someone who’s been working in independent book publishing for several decades, and we started talking about this very topic. As soon as I mentioned having a choice between making the game “fast” or “doing it right,” he stopped me, pointed at my chest, and said, “You’re doing it right, right?”

I take that as a good sign.

]]>2017-01-27T16:12:25+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/moving-the-release-progress-update-and-sneak-peak-at-new-classesWe’ve got a bunch of ground to cover, so I’m going to go ahead and dive right in.

First, after a lot of deliberation, we’ve decided to move the release date of the game to the summer. City of the Shroud is on track to be basically finished by February/March, but there are some potential challenges for the team if we push to release by that date. We want to make sure to deliver a rock solid game, so we’ve decided to play it safe and put it out a lit...]]>

We’ve got a bunch of ground to cover, so I’m going to go ahead and dive right in.

First, after a lot of deliberation, we’ve decided to move the release date of the game to the summer. City of the Shroud is on track to be basically finished by February/March, but there are some potential challenges for the team if we push to release by that date. We want to make sure to deliver a rock solid game, so we’ve decided to play it safe and put it out a little later.

There are a few reasons, but the biggest issue is that my S.O. and I will have to move internationally sometime between February and April - I had hoped to be able to avoid this timing, but we were not so lucky! With the destination and timing likely to remain a mystery until February at the earliest, it’s best for City of the Shroud if we are stably set up and I can focus everything on the game and its living story - moving the release is the best way to ensure that.

Production is on track (for game development, at least!), but pushing for February or March would leave us with less time to polish and fix bugs than we’re comfortable with. Polishing the game is a major goal for us, and it’s key to back that up with enough time to follow through. It will also give the art team a bit more breathing room to perfect their work!

We cherish the autonomy and flexibility that comes with self-publishing, but that means the difficult decisions are ours to make. We hope you you understand why we’ve decided to move the launch back and support us in doing so.

We love hearing from you, so please let us know if you have any questions!

All that said, we are really excited about the new things we’re getting into the game! Here’s are some of what we’ve got in the works right now:

Every character class is implemented: All 6 classes in the game are fully playable with all of their abilities. The next step is creating their visual and sound effects, and once those are finished (they’re being worked on right now), we’ll be rolling them out to our Noble and higher backers.

New environments: We’ve completed the assets for a new section of the city, and are nearly finished with the assets for the next. Here’s a sneak-peak at one of them:

Major graphical and performance improvements: We’ve upgraded our shaders to show more detail and in higher quality. Seeing the old and new next to each other is really something. We’re also updating the version of Unity we’re working in, which has given us a nice bump in performance. The game already ran at ~35 fps on a several-year old MacBook Pro, so we’re hoping this upgrade ensures the game runs well for everyone.

Character asset mod support: We’ve set up Steam Workshop functionality and are testing the ability to upload and download modified character model files. All signs are pointing to this feature being online very soon!

Finally, I want to share a couple of screenshots with you - one of each of the new classes. I’ll leave their fighting style and tactics to your imagination, but I hope they get you excited to check them out in-game!

Thank you for helping us to make this game a reality, and we can’t wait to get it into your hands!

]]>2016-12-07T13:37:29+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/egx-and-introducing-the-duelistThis is a big update! First, we’re taking City of the Shroud to EGX - formerly the Eurogamer Expo - from September 22 - 25! Chris and I will be heading up to the NEC in Birmingham, UK, to show off the game. We’ll be in the Rezzed Zone, so come on down and say hi!

We’ll also be next to Matt Gambell, who has helped us with all of our trailers and is the developer of RPG Tycoon. He’ll be showing off his new...]]>

This is a big update! First, we’re taking City of the Shroud to EGX - formerly the Eurogamer Expo - from September 22 - 25! Chris and I will be heading up to the NEC in Birmingham, UK, to show off the game. We’ll be in the Rezzed Zone, so come on down and say hi!

We’ll also be next to Matt Gambell, who has helped us with all of our trailers and is the developer of RPG Tycoon. He’ll be showing off his new game, Living the Deal, along with Tom Pickard, who did the environment assets and the UI update for CotS. It’ll be a regular Brighton Indies party! Or, more accurately, “enthusiasm encouragement group” (aka swapping out coffee runs). We have a wonderful group of indie developers in Brighton, and we’re constantly finding ways to help each other, from coffee runs to production support to trailer editing. This is another extension of that!

But in even more exciting news, we are finally ready to unveil something we’ve been dying to get into your hands for months: the newest addition to CotS’ class roster, the Duelist!

The Duelist is a martial-arts cowboy… assassin… Basically, she’s awesome:

“The Duelist is a hybrid strength/dexterity class, and also a hybrid melee/ranged class. Armed with pistols and martial arts, she has abilities to dash in and out of melee, as well as abilities that function differently if your target is in melee or at range. This makes the Duelist a very flexible class, capable of setting the terms of the fight. However, as the name suggests, the Duelist does best when fighting a single target, so you can defeat enemy Duelists by sticking together and ganging up on them.

When you manage to isolate your target, the Duelist is without question the deadliest class in the game. The core philosophy of the Duelist is that the best defense is a good offense, and if you can get an enemy in a one on one situation you will be able to use your mobility and disruptive offense to make short work of them.

When building a Duelist, you will have to choose between mobility, disruption, or pure offensive power. Whether you want to focus on staying safe and faking out your opponent while you whittle them down or simply diving in and going for the throat, the Duelist is going to be adept at picking off fragile enemies.”

Here are some of the moves you’ll unlock for her in the game:

Dash: From range, move to the closest available space adjacent to the target. In melee, move to the opposite side of the target. In either case, deal damage to all enemies in your path (if the enemies are lined up, you can use this ability to dash through the entire line, dealing damage to all of them). (Cost: 2)

Flashbang: Toss a grenade at the target which explodes after 3 seconds, damagingall characters within 1 tile of the blast and reducing their damage by 50%. (Cost: 3)

Quick Shot: Deal bonus damage if you have moved within the past 5 seconds. (Cost: 1)

Roundhouse: Damage and knock back all adjacent characters. (Cost: 4)

Here’s an example of how those tie together:

Dash (Move in on target, dealing damage while you do) >

Quick Shot (you just moved, let’s use the opportunity!) >

Roundhouse (Damage the opponent and get knock them out of range if they’re melee) >

Flashbang (Deal damage and reduce their damage - let’s see them try to counterattack!)

All together, this advanced combo only costs 5 AP, and you’ve just closed the distance, hit them 4 times, knocked them out of melee range, and reduced their damage by 50%. The Duelist is fast and dangerous (and is my personal favorite of all the classes)! But don’t worry - the other classes have just as much up their sleeves.

We’ll be rolling out the Duelist to Noble backers and higher for initial playtesting after EGX. I’ll be setting up a Beta channel on Steam where you can access a build with the Duelist and the updated UI. Then, I’ll send the Beta password to Noble and up backers once the build is live, and then we can get started with some play sessions! Once the Duelist has been thoroughly tested, we will roll her out for everyone to enjoy.

So, O Noble (and up) Backers, keep an eye out for your Beta branch passwords, and hopefully you will love the Duelist as much as I do.

And if you’re in the UK and are going to EGX, be sure to drop by our booth to say hi!

]]>2016-09-19T20:29:52+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/new-gunner-abilities-and-animations-insomnia-58-and-games-by-the-seaHow is your summer going? I recently acquired a wicked t-shirt shaped tan line by way of a nice, red sunburn. Who says developers never go outside?

How is your summer going? I recently acquired a wicked t-shirt shaped tan line by way of a nice, red sunburn. Who says developers never go outside?

First, I want to give a big thank-you to Charlie Ewing, creator of Flow Point, and Liz Henwood of The Yarn Mouse (she’s doing our amigurumi!) and Sock Thuggery for showing City of the Shroud at Games by the Sea at Develop, where they were showing off local indie talent! Chris and I weren’t able to go to the event this year, but our friends stepped in to help us out. The game went over really well, and “lots of people played it for a really long time,” which of course is a good thing!

On the game front, we’ve got a few things we’ll be adding to the Steam build for you to play around with soon - first, we’ve received all of the Gunner’s animations and have put them in the game!

Attacks in CotS use a combination of animation and visual effects to show each ability. Last month, when I mentioned new abilities, we were still in process of getting animations and VFX set up, but now, they’re pretty much ready to go. Since we have the Gunner’s animations fresh off the… animation software, I’ll run you through some of the new ones (and some of the ones that make way more sense now) below!

Just a note: they’re not all tuned yet, meaning the timing on some of the movement and visual effects may be a bit off, but I figured: why wait?

Dynamite: throw a stick of dynamite that deals damage to adjacent tiles after a set amount of time. The danger indicator is new too (and placeholder)!

Buckshot: The opposite of Snipe - deal more damage the closer you are to the target. Can be combined with Scramble and Parting Gift, which deals damage to adjacent tiles when you move away, for an in-your-face playstyle.

Aim Down Sights/Scramble: when the Gunner has certain buffs active, like Aim Down Sights or Scramble, she will take on a unique idle animation until the effects wear off.

Staggering Shot: deals damage and removes a dodge buff from the target, dealing bonus damage if it does (dodge buffs negate an opponent’s yellow gem attacks).

Vault: Jump backward one tile and deal damage while you do it! Great for getting out of melee range and making the opponent pay for it while you do. Works well with Magnetic Mine.

And finally, Spray and Pray: shoot 21 times, spreading the damage across all tiles adjacent to the target.

We’re really happy with how the animations turned out and can’t wait to let you guys play with them!

Those of you with keen eyes may notice some slight graphical improvements to the game as well - hopefully you like them!

We’re about ready to roll out the new character class abilities for testing to our Noble-tier and higher backers! We have a bit of tweaking to do before we do (we want you to be able to just get them instead of having to fight random battles until they drop, for example), so as soon as that’s all ready, we’ll be rolling out a new test branch on Steam. Keep an eye out!

We’ve also got some very cool possibilities on the horizon, but we’re still feeling them out. If it happens though… oh man, it will be exciting.

Last but not least, City of the Shroud will be going to Insomnia 58 from August 26 - 29 at NEC in Birmingham, UK.

If you’re going, come by and say hi - we’ll have a (hopefully VERY) updated version of the game on display!

]]>2016-07-25T09:34:50+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/progress-update-new-art-and-a-sneak-peakWe've got a few fun updates for you, and to kick things off, we have finalized the in-game portrait for the beloved Hat Merchant. Here he is, in all his finery:

Take a moment to let that soak in....]]>

We've got a few fun updates for you, and to kick things off, we have finalized the in-game portrait for the beloved Hat Merchant. Here he is, in all his finery:

Take a moment to let that soak in. Also, dig that fez-patterned bow-tie. It's majestic.

...

I love the Hat Merchant.

Progress Update

Moving on: our primary goal with the Kickstarter was building the art for our remaining character classes, and we're making really good progress on that front. If you'll forgive me getting a wee bit detailed, we spoke with our friends at Playerium who are making the characters, and together, in addition to making the new characters, we decided that we would rework the existing models to look better, animate better, and allow for way more customization (without affecting our production schedule to boot!).

We aren't quite ready to show you the fruits of our labor (it's looking so cool), but as a testrun, we reworked the Gunner model basically from the ground up and have gotten her animating leagues ahead of where she was before... along with a few other features we're keeping secret for now. We have new animations for all her abilities incoming as well, and I can't wait to show some of them off!

And in case you haven't seen it yet, here's a demo of what's possible with her new setup:

We also recently got the last remaining abilities for the Mage, Gunner, and Brute classes into the game and they are currently undergoing bug fixes and placeholder VFX creation so that we can send them out to our in-dev feature testers. I've been playing with them, and depending on how you use them, they can really change the way a class plays.

Sneak Peak

Finally, I know I said we weren't quite ready to show anything off yet, but I just can't help myself... here's a preview of something coming down the pipe soon:

Thank you as always for all of your support, and we can't wait to get all the stuff we've got in the works out to you!

]]>2016-06-21T16:32:02+00:00Shibusukehttp://www.abyssalarts.com/posts/city-of-the-shroud-is-funded-on-kickstarterWE DID IT!!

Over 300 of people came together and helped bring City of the Shroud to life. We cannot thank our backers enough for their support, and are so, so excited to share this journey with everyone.